As I was walking in the streets of New York City for the last couple of days, and looking for restaurants that use mobile marketing as a strategy to attract people, I was also thinking of how mobile marketing would be even more useful for those restaurants.

1. Restaurant promotes a keyword “Text MENU to 63566” for VIP special deals and save 10% from today’s bill”

2. People text and show the text to the waiter or the bartender. At the same time they are now part of the mobile promotions list.

3. When the restaurant is slow or wants to promote a new menu item or event they text the people on the list and increase traffic and sales that way, when people come in.

Here are some specific examples of how mobile marketing can be used in the restaurant and bar business:

Coupons on customers’ phones: print coupons are not very useful nowadays, because you are most likely to forget them at home. Having a coupon on your phone will make it more accessible and, hence, more likely to be used by the customer. This will create more business for the restaurant, especially on slow days. Coupons could be buy one, get one free, get a $10 off for every $50 spent, get percentage off the entire price, etc. Especially helpful would be if coupons are sent at strategic hours of the day, say lunch time, or dinner time. Also, a good strategy would be for the restaurant to send the coupon to a specific group. For example, with the GPS location of every person on the list, the restaurant can send coupons to people who are in 10 mile radius of the restaurant at 11am or 12pm. Then send the same coupon for dinner, say around 5pm or 6pm, depending on which area the restaurant is located.